Dr, Charles (Chuck) Gannon, Nebula nominee and Compton Award winner, has graciously agreed to participate in this character interview with one of the main characters of his book, Fire with Fire. Chuck is a great writer, as can be evidenced by his sales and awards. He’s also one of the nicest people you will ever meet, and well deserving of his success. It was his idea to split the interview between mine and Sarah’s blog, in an effort to help both of us. If you have not checked him out (or even if you have), please go to the links just below:

This is part two of the interview. Part one is hosted on Sarah Hoyt’s Blog, and you need to go there and read that part before reading this. Don’t worry, this part will still be here. Sarah is also a wonderfully gifted writer, and her books deserve your consideration. And my minor plug for myself. Exodus: Empires at War is my major series, and it is doing very well on Amazon with 70,000 sales over 7 books and over 800 reviews. You can check out book 1 here.

And so, without further ado, here is Chuck Gannon’s character interview, in which much will be revealed about the character and Universe in his award winning novel.

“Interviewer” was authorized to interview origin-source Simulacrum “Corcoran” in Virtual Node after full debriefing and explicit agreement to observe interrogatory constraints. Intentional or unintentional compromise of the Simulacrum’s current contiguous knowledge base was established as condition which would trigger partial discontinuation and pause of the Virtual Node as warning (i.e.; “environment hazing”). Full termination occurs upon multiple compromises or disregard of warnings.

{Transcript Continues}

Interviewer: With that said—and thank you for unpacking what has been a much-debated matter—I’d like to return to the question that launched us into the topic in the first place. Which was this: if you had it to do over again, would you take such a hard line against the megacorporations? (A long pause.) Admiral Corcoran, would you rather skip this question?

Corcoran: No, no. Unless compelled to do so by official secrecy constraints, I hate agreeing to an interview and then hiding behind “no comments.” I’m just trying to think carefully before I answer your question, because it’s a very good one. It troubled me a lot, over the years, in fact. Frankly, I did not foresee the problems we had with so many of the non-Industrial megacorporations.

Interviewer: How did they surprise you?

Corcoran: Well, there were two key surprises in dealing with them. First of all, there was the mild surprise that they didn’t take any of the early incentives we tried to offer them to become fellow travellers. A large part of that may have stemmed from our not being able to let anyone belonging to those megacorporations inside the final tiers of secrecy, those which would have shown them what we found on the Doomsday Rock. Consequently, they probably did not realize we were trying to sweeten the pot for them when we did—and we had no way to point it out without violating our own secrecy protocols. So if the megacorporations didn’t notice our wink and then our nod, they may have missed all of our veiled overtures to be a part of the total solution to Earth’s safety, rather than an impediment. I do wonder if we could have strategized our approach to them more effectively, but the reality was that IRIS was always terribly understaffed. Optimization was usually a desideratum that we just had to leave in the dust. We did what we could and then the motto had to be, “drive on.” There was always another challenge coming, just up ahead. So we dropped a lot of balls, and threw a lot of inaccurate pitches, because we were always playing short-handed.

That inability to get the non-industrial megacorporations to realize we were trying to push some compensatory benefits their way was the small surprise. The much larger one was their sudden rush into cooperation and even, in some cases, collectivization. Witness the origins and growth of CoDevCo.

Interviewer: Because much of audience might be unfamiliar with the acronym CoDevCo, or how it related to what you call the megacorporate “rush into cooperation or collectivization,” I’m wondering if you could expand a little bit upon these topics.

Corcoran: I’d be happy to. CoDevCo is short-hand for the Colonial Development Combine. At the risk of monstrous over-generalization, it is not a single corporation, but an alliance of many individual megacorporations, coordinated to pursue the various functions of interstellar settlement and resource exploitation. One way to think of it is to draw a loose parallel to Lloyds of London. Lloyds services various large-scale insurance needs, but is actually a kind of commercial confederation, an all-purpose bourse and clearing-house of many affiliated underwriters. By combining their expertise and assets, they provide a more comprehensive and better service than they could individually.

However, CoDevCo began developing differently from the Lloyd’s model shortly after we started finding numerous green worlds. Then information leaked that we had discovered signs of past (or so we thought) exosapient presence on Delta Pavonis III. CoDevCo already had a limited infrastructure development contract for the system, but when they learned there might be exosapient ruins dirt-side, they became extremely acquisitive. They put a very sweet co-development deal in front of the European Union bloc, which, due to some log-jams in its own exploratory pipeline, was all too glad to accept.

By accepting that co-development deal, the EU allowed the camel to stick its nose into their tent. Within the year, that same megacorporate camel had not only come entirely into their tent, but pushed them out. The original EU settlement had been degraded to a neglected backwater while CoDevCo founded a new colony site exactly where the exosapient ruins had been reported, in direct contravention of the planetary accords that had been reached between the EU and the New World CommonWealth bloc. Legal battles ensued, some of which became a bit kinetic around the edges. You can ask Caine Riordan about that.

At the same time, Earth’s five blocs were coming under pressure from the megacorporations to make them a direct partner in political processes. That was problematic for a number of different reasons, not the least because such an arrangement was wholly without legal basis or standing. At the same time, the blocs were getting some pretty alarming reports of truly egregious human-rights violations in the grey world colonies that CoDevCo had established on its own.

Interviewer: Again, for our audience, could you define “grey world?”

Corcoran: Sure, although everyone surely knows what—well, never mind. So: a grey world. Simply, a world that has no native biota and is unsuitable to the introduction of terrestrial life or even xenobiota. So, it’s grey—as in “rock.” However, some grey worlds have considerable value, either as a source of raw materials or as a transportation hub. However, given the expenses of developing the more promising green or brown worlds and the fact they are the only ones that actual colonists really want to settle, the grey worlds fall into an unusual category. In terms of popular and settler interest, they are like unwanted orphans; on the other hand, they are necessary for the maintenance of maintaining shift links and a number of raw materials.

And that’s where CoDevCo comes in. They apply for a charter to develop the system and, in return, are allowed various tariffs, service fees, or resource extraction rights.

Interviewer: Sounds like a deal that leaves everyone happy.

Corcoran: Well, they would be, if everyone who enters the deal is a stake-holder. But about five years into the process of interstellar settlement, it turned out that 95 % of the grey world work force were not stake holders at all. They weren’t even conventional employees. They were extended contract workers, overwhelmingly hired from the under-developed world. And a lot of them didn’t read the fine print which attached their wages for life-support costs, and communication costs, and etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. Just fill in the infamous “company store” clauses and you get the picture. They were in hock for the rest of their lives.

Interviewer: Why is it that CoDevCo didn’t simply go with automated systems?

Corcoran: Actually, that had been their intent from the first—and that’s how we got surprised by what happened as a result. You see, CoDevCo had always intended to run their grey world operations with 90 % automation, but they made a couple of key errors.

To start with, CoDevCo cut its teeth assisting resource extraction in the asteroid belt. They understood the difference between what humans can do—damn near anything, but not too well or too quickly—and what robots can do—a limited set of tasks but really well and really quickly. Their intention was to use humans to set up the systems on each grey world, and then move that pioneering work-force on to the next target grey world once the machines took over.

But it didn’t work out that way. Top-end automation has always been expensive. It was one of the constant limiting factors in developing our own asteroid belt as extensively as we wanted. So, when calculating their grey world bids, CoDevCo staked its profit margin on their ability to engineer and produce a new generation of better robots. And they did—or so they thought. Their new robots and automated systems performed well in tests, but they came out of the development labs late and so, were rushed through field trials on an accelerated time-table. I can’t tell if you the government contract overseers were asleep at the switch, under pressure from the blocs to give a green light no matter what, or getting bribes under the table from CoDevCo. Or some combination of all three. Whatever the reason, the amount of testing that should have been performed was not completed—particularly in establishing the per unit reliability estimates and time-frames.

Bottom line: the robots started breaking down right and left at about the same time—and not quite one third of the way through their first maintenance cycle. CoDevCo was suddenly hard up to make sure they delivered on their contracts. At that point, contract failure could have led to reversion of their development rights—and then they’d have sunk all those R&D and production costs for nothing, except as a means of ensuring their own insolvency. And in all probability, the Industrials—who had wanted those robot and automation contracts but had been passed over to keep the other megacorporations happy—would have been able to scoop up the R&D that their competitors had paid for and, using half the money and half the time, come to the rescue and look like heroes. So CoDevCo answered their sudden labor need with a known and proven alternative: humans.

But humans are expensive to use in any environment where they require almost one hundred percent life support. And that includes shipping them out on spacecraft: again, they are far more expensive to move than machines. So CoDevCo now had a way to meet their contracts, but had inherited another problem: soaring work-force costs. So while their engineers started slaving away to create a better second generation of automation and robots, CoDevCo’s accounting division started looking for belt-tightening opportunities. Some of those were in the production of cryogenic suspension systems, where they reduced the per unit cost by fifty percent. Only problem was that those units had nearly a five percent mortality rate, and a corresponding increase in function irregularities which induced neural and other physiological damage, much of which was permanent. And since returning the bodies of the deceased was not provided for in the worker contracts, CoDevCo discovered that they had an additional incentive to allow the increased mortality rates to remain uncorrected. (A long pause.)

Interviewer: I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are implying, Admiral Corcoran.

Corcoran: (Sighs.) In 2113 we learned what CoDevCo was doing with the bodies of those who had died in cold sleep, or in failed reanimation attempts: they were using them as biomass.

Interviewer: You mean—as raw materials?

Corcoran: I mean as food. It was the old axiom ‘waste not; want not’ raised to a ghoulish acme. And they had the perfect set-up to put those corpses ‘into the mix,’ so to speak. The contractual crisis on the grey worlds had forced CoDevCo to come up with some pretty fast, low-cost, low-volume solutions to housing and feeding their workers. The feeding side was particularly revolting: they installed algae vats to generate basic carbohydrates and cricket farms to generate protein. But the cycles were not self-sustaining, even though you could raise the crickets on dried algae, also. At some point, if the food-chain does not have certain high-grade additives, the nutritive value of the whole system sags—and you have lethargic workers prone to weakness, sickness, and depression. So even though CoDevCo lost one in every twenty workers they sent out to a grey world, they were able to use that lost worker to—well, “rejuvenate” the content of the algae vats. Those additional nutrients boosted production and quality of the algae, which made for bigger, more nutritious crickets that were then ground into protein flour and powders.

Interviewer: So CoDevCo had fundamentally used undisclosed cannibalism to prop up their balance sheets.

Corcoran: Well, they came up with other euphemisms for the whole process, but yes, that’s what it amounts to. It was about two years before anyone discovered it—largely because no one thought to look for it. It was so outrageous that, until someone sat down to try to figure out how CoDevCo was managing to turn a profit on the grey worlds in those early days, no one could have even imagined it. It was only discovered when folks started examining every step of that profit-generation process under an actuarial microscope.

Interviewer: And so how did this lead to the collectivizing that so surprised you in your dealings with the megacorporations?

Corcoran: Well, as you probably know from the dates I’ve been referring to, this was when the fecal matter really hit the rotary air circulator. In the space of a few months, CoDevCo had come under open investigation for its grey world worker treatment policies, and was under confidential investigation for allegations of willful malfeasance in regards to its cold sleep systems and incorporating cannibalism in its worker maintenance program. And it was in the course of the latter investigations that we discovered that CoDevCo had, as a whole, created a whole new business in which all its member entities were proportional shareholders: its Optigene Division. On paper, Optigene was a research firm specializing in all forms of genetic medicine: anti-cancer retroviruses, gene selection and amplification in artificial reproduction, telomere repair-and-refurbishment drugs. All wonderful initiatives. But, even given the research costs of these cutting-edge products and services, there was still concern about its operating costs: they were extremely—and I mean extremely—high for a firm that was supposedly concerned solely with research, not production. So we investigated Optigene and found that they had founded a number of truly off-shore laboratories and were conducting wholly ex-vivo human cloning, with an emphasis on accelerating maturation. They were trying to build a cheaper work force. And essentially, they were breaking every international accord ever signed about human cloning in order to do it.

Interviewer: And did you shut them down?

Corcoran: Well, we wanted to—but that’s where the collectivization factor starts rearing its ugly head. In one of the most flagrant examples of its ineffectuality, the UN called upon Optigene to terminate its operations and open its facilities to inspectors. Except, it turns out, that CoDevCo had bought—outright purchased, lock, stock, and barrel—the fairly isolated regions in which Optigene was operating. The land was, formally, no longer owned by the nation state which had sold it. This launched an investigation into which nation Optigene was officially incorporated in or under—and that hit a brick wall.

Interviewer: Why?

Corcoran: Because up until that point, the presumption of law was that all territories’ final ownership ultimately devolved or connected back to authorization under the national aegis of an originating nation. And we’re not talking about unclaimed land or oceans, here: we are talking about areas that had been legally acknowledged as belonging to various countries which then had sold those tracts to Optigene. So they all had ownership precedents.

This created singular legal and practical quandaries. The UN and the Hague both determined that the nations did not have the legal right, according to the UN, to relinquish legal control of and responsibility for any part of their territory to a non-state entity. The states in question mounted some pretty impressive counter-argumentation—ably funded and supported by CoDevCo, naturally. Meanwhile, exactly how the hell was the UN going to force the labs to be opened? Leaving aside the sticky issue of how much force to use, and whose, the situation created a double legal difficulty in securing consent: the land was either no longer answerable to the UN, or, if it was, the former owners indicated that they would terminate their membership in the UN before giving their consent. Which of course only introduced further legal tangles.

Now, while this legal brawl was up-spiraling in both complexity and shrillness, CoDevCo was evolving into an increasingly coherent and collectivized entity, driven towards that by the various external pressures and scrutiny that were being brought to bear upon it. I think this surprised us because most of us had operated under the assumption that since there is no honor among thieves, there’d be correspondingly little unity among megacorporations. And I’m not sure we were entirely wrong about that, but what we couldn’t anticipate when we made those assumptions was that we would uncover such egregious violations in CoDevCo, and that, in turn, our reactions would trigger an even stronger, and inverse, reflex among its constituent commercial entities. In short, that there is strength in numbers. Suddenly, there was no way to divide their ranks by offering sweet deals to pivotal companies that, once parted from the fold, undermined the resolve of, and scattered, the rest. Now, circumstances had compelled them to stand their ground like a ring of yaks, and had thus midwifed a phenomenon that probably could not have been brought into existence any other way: true corporate collectivism. We—the various representatives and actors of the nation states—had unwittingly forced them into an alliance so close that they transmogrified into a unitary commercial entity with unprecedented will, power, and coordinated purpose.

Interviewer: So, to wrap up the matter of the accusations that have been leveled against you, there are some who’ve anticipated that you would offer these kinds of explanations for your actions. They have dismissed such “appeals to undisclosable contexts” as “re-directing sophistries.”

Corcoran: And you believe that?

Interviewer: I can’t answer that question directly, given my role here. But let me suggest that, in making that statement, I have provided you with an opportunity to speak to those accusations.

Corcoran: (smiles) I knew you were on my side. So, let’s drop the learned discourse and get down to brass tacks. You learn that someone—or some force—is threatening everything that you know and love, all the history that led to it, and all the posterity that shall carry it on. Do you sit and do nothing? You might. Some might call that “moral transcendence:” to remain unsullied by acts of questionable morality, and to let the cosmos unfold as it will. But I’m going to borrow a bit of wisdom from folks who are known to be pretty darned pacifistic: the Buddhists. To paraphrase their perspective: to choose to do nothing is still a choice, and a choice is action.

Which, to put it in utterly immediate terms, boils down to this: we’re born into a world that may be morally neutral, but it is populated by creatures that are not. Even animals fight for their own interests. But humans are different because we can choose our moral relationship to this contentious world. Do we choose to act in pure self-interest, like a voracious wolf? Do we choose not to act at all, like rabbits that go limp when finally caught under the wolf’s paws? Or do we choose to act both for ourselves and others—like a wolfhound, ever ready to drive off the wolf?

I’d like to say I chose the latter course because I was some kind of incredibly enlightened, moral being. I’m not. It’s just who I’ve always been. I suppose it was who I was raised to be. I don’t think that I, or anyone, can right all the wrongs of the world. But that wasn’t what I set out to do when I created IRIS and carried out all the actions subsequent to that initiative. I just wanted to give this flawed, wonderful Earth of ours a fighting chance. I had seen the imprint of the wolf’s teeth sunk deep into the surface of the Doomsday Rock and, damn it, I was not going to go down without a fight. And I have to believe that most human beings feel the same way when they think about their family, their friends, their unborn grandchildren. You don’t just lie down and give up: you take the fight to the ravening wolves just as hard and as long and as unrelentingly as you can. And you carry on in the belief that someone will pick up the flag and carry it forward when you fall. Because that belief is the core of hope—and when you get right down to it, hope is the decisive tool and weapon of all humankind. Because without it, you lack the will to act, and without that will, you cannot prevail.

That said, we make mistakes. And the more responsibility that we hold, the greater the consequences when we make those mistakes. Furthermore, no fight is an unalloyed moral good. I don’t know how killing a person is ever ‘good.’ The best you can say is that it might be necessary, if it is an unavoidable part of driving off that wolf. But because some of our actions will be inherently estranged from basic morality, and because we will make mistakes, we will carry guilt away from that fight. We will wonder if we had to do all the things we did—because that is the price morality exacts, and we must not shirk it. To be able to kill or manipulate the lives of others without later qualms and regrets means, to my way of thinking, that you have become amoral, and are more likely to be aligned with the wolf than the wolfhounds. The pain of remorse is what tells you that your soul is still alive.

Interviewer: It sounds like this is something to which you’ve given a lot of thought.

Corcoran: (Smiles.) You should know; you wrote the book. So to speak. (Long pause. Confusion evident.)

Interviewer: (Suddenly; agitated) Admiral Corcoran, it is imperative that you try to think past your current confusion and provide me with any information you might have on the Dornaani.

ENVIRONMENT HAZING EMPLOYED AS WARNING TO INTERVIEWER

Corcoran: The who?

Interviewer: Do you remember dying, or anything that came after? Do you remember—?

VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT TERMINATED.

Transcript ends.

Summary of Event Resolution:

Custodian recommendation was to detain “Interviewer,” pending debrief. This recommendation was rejected in favor of selective reconditioning of “Interviewer.”

Consolidated Terran Republic consulate’s request for extradition have been countered with explanation that an “extensive debrief” is required by our Security Collective, which will take a considerable amount of time.

It’s been a busy week. First, on Saturday I actually went past the 100,000 sales mark, mostly ebooks, but also some paperbacks and audiobooks. That afternoon I signed a contract for my Exodus: Empires at War short story Goliath to appear in Volume Three of Kevin J Anderson’s Five By Five Military Anthology. Did a blog post on Sunday about reaching that 100,000 book milestone, then a character interview with Cornelius Walborski on Monday as part of a blog tour. Then finished this book yesterday and posted in on Amazon. Add to that the blog post I will be sending to David Farland for his Kick In The Pants blog, and trying to close on a house (which is causing all kinds of problems) this had been a hectic week, made even more so by one of my cats getting an infection from an injury. He’s a little jerk, but guess who gets to pay for his behavior?

So, about this book. People ask me all the time about how I sell so many books. This is at the same time when I am complaining to myself that I’m not selling enough. I guess part of that drive to do more, get more, has led to my success. When I started self-publishing, after over a decade of sending in manuscripts to garner rejection letters, I was really hoping to make enough money and sell enough books to get out of the financial hole I was in (over time) and gain the attention of some editors and publishers. While that second part has worked out as I had wanted, the first part, getting out of the financial hole, has worked so well that I quit my day job in March of 2013. And have never looked back. But it did not start out so well. I sold about sixty books in the first eight months I was self-published, making at most twenty or thirty dollars in a month. I read every book I could about how to sell books on Amazon. Most had a couple of techniques, some that seemed kind of flighty, like getting on the good side of readers with one blog post to gain their attention. Some were pretty good. I also read blogs. I took all of the techniques and strategies and found the ones that worked for me. Some didn’t, but I learned which they were and stopped putting effort there. And here, in this book, is just about everything I have done to gain a positive net presence and sell lots of books. I say just about, because there may be some things I did early on that I can no longer remember. But everything of importance is in here, including hints on what not to do. If you want to know what I did, get this book.

Now it’s on to completing the fourth book of the Refuge series (Doppleganger, though set in that world, does not count as a series book for most purposes). After that will be a book title Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Supernova, which has nothing to do with the stellar explosion in Book 7, but which will introduce an alien race that will be very important to the war effort. And asks the question, ‘while in the middle of a war of extinction, how many resources can you spare to save an alien species that is not even part of your society?’

I would like to thank the lovely Sarah Hoyt, the Beautiful but Evil Space Princess, for tagging me for the “Meet the Character” Blog Tour. Her own blog can be found here.

An Interview with the Baron Cornelius Walborski, Significant Character in Exodus: Empires at War and main character in Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger.

I kind of wondered what I was doing here myself, when there are so many more important aspects of this war to cover. A war that was costing humanity dearly, one which we were in no way assured of winning. Instead, here I was, sitting in a small room in the Imperial Palace, waiting to interview a young noble. I had looked up all I could on the young man, and was sure that most of what the records had to say were propaganda intended to boost the morale of the public. I mean, no one could have survived what he had, could they?

The door opened, and the man I was waiting for walked in. He was easy to recognize. Not that he was such an unusual subject, with his short brown hair and sun darkened skin, just a bit taller than average. The uniform, Imperial Army dress blues, looked much the same as so many others I had seen in the palace. Golden bars on the shoulder boards, the mark of a junior officer. Ranger tab on his left sleeve, the mark of his sacrifice of life for ability. The ribbons on his left breast, more than would be expected in a young lieutenant, including one that made me suck in my breath. It’s one thing to hear of someone winning two Imperial Medals of Heroism, but to actually see the evidence. And the last indication of something special was the shining metallic plate hanging from the chain round his neck, the mark of an Imperial Knight.

The young man looked into my eyes, and suddenly all doubts about his record were gone. The eyes were a deep blue, with a stare that looked across light years of space. The eyes of a man who has already seen too much, but was determined to look on all he needed to survey to see the war completed to the satisfaction of his species.

“My Lord,” I said, getting to my feet and reaching out a hand as I bowed at the waist slightly.

“Call me Cornelius,” said the young man in a strong New Detroit accent, bowing his head a bit as he stepped forward. His gait was pure grace, his grip strong without being crushing, and he moved like a man who was well aware of his physical superiority, and was careful around those of us not so endowed.

But the price he paid, I thought, keeping a smile on my face, even while I thought of the decades he must have sacrificed to become augmented. Most of the augmented, the retroactively genetic engineered, did not live past their one hundred eightieth birthday, forty years less than the average. Not that there were many in the military that expected to make it that far into their normal life span.

“I’m still not used to all of this bowing and scraping,” said Walbroski with a smile. “I never much liked being on the other side of the scraping. Not sure I like this view any better.”

The young man sat in the facing chair, and I returned to mine. A servant entered with two drinks, what looked like ale or beer, in sweating glasses. The Baron was offered first, as befitted his social rank, then myself.

“So, what does Galactic News Network want from me?” asked the young man.

“At least in the regiment I don’t have to put up with all of this deference,” growled the Ranger. “There, we’re all just men, no one better or worse than the other. The whole reason I left New Detroit, so I didn’t have to put up with that nonsense.”

“Strange words coming from someone who is considered a friend of the Emperor.”

“Sean’s great,” said Walborski, his eyes softening. “He plays the game, because it’s expected of him, but anyone who tries to play sycophant with him is going to regret it.”

“And the reason he’s your friend? That he was the best man at your wedding, while you were his?”

“I tell him the truth,” said the Ranger, after taking a sip from his beer. “He respects that, just like I respect him looking for it. No surprise there.”

I looked him in the eyes, seeing no deception, something, if I say so myself, I am good at spotting. “Where did you get the nickname, Hunter?”

The smile left his face, and I wondered if I had crossed the line. “I use to help my dad run hunts for nobles back on New Detroit. That’s how he made his living, before some idiot got him killed.”

“And Sestius? From what I read, the colonists also hung that label on you.”

“I went just a little bit, crazy, on Sestius,” said The Hunter, his eyes flashing fire. “The damned bastard Cacas killed my wife. I thought they might need to pay a blood price for that, so I went out into the jungle and hunted them down.”

“Twenty of them? And you weren’t even augmented yet?”

“You ever seen a Ca’cadasan?”asked the young man, referring to the aliens who had made it their mission in life to destroy humanity.

I nodded. Everyone had seen them, at least on the tri dee. Three meters of bipedal mammal, with four mighty arms and faces like demons. Topped by twin horns a half meter tall. “Terrifying creatures,” I agreed.

“But not all that much in the jungle,” said the Hunter, the smile on his face transforming into something that would make even those powerful creatures quail. “They didn’t evolve for that environment. From what I understand, they lived in tribal groups in scrub forest, which doesn’t tend to produce the best jungle fighters. They’re big and clumsy, and you can hear them coming a kilometer away.”

“But to face one, by yourself?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not so hard to face them when you come up from behind. . And a mono-molecular blade does them just fine.”

“So, Sestius made you want to become a Ranger?”

“Preacher made me want to become a Ranger,” said Walborski, shaking his head. “I’d never seen anyone move like he could. And I wanted to be the same, so I could kill Cacas.”

“But the cost?” I asked, waiting for the reply that would tell me so much about this man.

Cornelius looked like he wanted to say something, but his mouth remained shut and he shook his head. I knew there was another story there, but one I was not going to get this day.

“Tell me a little bit about Azure?”

The light year stare returned to the eyes, and I could tell that his memories were not pleasant. The young man took another sip from his beer and set it down, and I could detect a slight shake his hand.

“A lot of good men went into the brush of Azure,” he said in a quiet voice. “It was the most hellish jungle you could imagine. Full of things that wanted to kill and eat you, plant, animal and the damned hybrids.” His shoulders shook for a moment. “I’m just happy to be out of that place. It was hell for the Cacas too, but we made it even more so.”

“And you destroyed a Ca’cadasan HQ after they wiped out the rest of the company? That took some courage.”

“It took some insanity,” said the Hunter with a chuckle. “But it needed to be done, I was in place to do it, so I did. That’s all there is to it.”

“And you received another Imperial Medal of Heroism for it.”

“This thing?” said the Ranger, his finger touching the ribbon. “I would give this away just to bring back half of those men I went in there with. Unfortunately, the Universe doesn’t work that way.”

“And then the Donut? And saving the Empress on her wedding day? Any future plans for saving the Empire?”

The eyes flashed again in anger, and I realized I was in the presence of one of the most dangerous men in the Empire. And, good thing for me, one of the most disciplined men as well.

“I’m not a hero, Mr. Reporter,” he said in a voice that approached a low growl. “I wanted nothing more than to live my life, work my farm, and be left alone. I was the most horrible soldier in the Sestius militia. My officers and sergeants thought I was the biggest waste of skin in the regiment.”

“And now you are one of the most decorated soldiers in the Imperial Army. Comments?”

“Something took away my wife, and my life. Killed my neighbors, destroyed my farm. And I couldn’t allow them to get away with that. So I stepped in and did what needed doing.”

The Hunter took one more sip of beer and put the glass on the side table, then turned those terrifying eyes back on me. It was my turn to feel a shiver run up my spine.

“I don’t have a death wish. Oh, I did, when my wife was killed. I wanted to kill the bastards, and didn’t really care if I made it out or not.”

“And now?”

“I have a wife and children now,” he said, looking up at the ceiling for a moment, then back into my eyes. His eyes had changed again, once more those of a caring young man. “I miss my late wife, and love Devera, my current partner, and our children. She treats them just like they are her own, and I love her to death for that. I want to come out of the other side of this thing alive and well. But I know that if I don’t do my best, if we all don’t fight to the best of our abilities, it doesn’t matter what I want. What I want out of life. Because we’re all going to be dead. You, me, my family, the billions of people on this world that I don’t know. So it’s up to me to do my part.”

The young man’s eyes changed once again, and I was once more looking at The Hunter. “I think this interview is over, Mr. Reporter.” He stood up from his seat, and I rose with him. He turned his back on this mere newsman, nothing special in the scheme of things, and walked with that graceful stride to the door and out.

I had my story, one that was sure to raise the moral of the people, realizing what kind of people we had fighting for us. And I felt sorry for the Cacas. They had no idea what they had created when they had killed yet one more human female on a frontier world. And now they had another human stalking them, hitting them from the shadows, putting the fear of humanity in their hearts. Poor bastards.

Next Monday (9/22//2104) I have a real treat. Author Chuck Gannon will be interviewing one of his characters. As Chuck does not have his own blog, we will be posting it on both Sarah Hoyt’s and my blog. Biography below. And for those who don’t know Chuck, go check out his books.

Dr. Charles E. Gannon’s Nebula-nominated best-seller, Fire With Fire, won the 2014 Compton Crook Award. It’s August 2014 sequel, Trial By Fire, launched (with a starred review in PW) as an immediate best-seller, as was Gannon’s June 2014 collaboration with Eric Flint, 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies. Their 1635: The Papal Stakes, was a Wall Street Journal Best Seller. Gannon also collaborates in the NYT best-selling Starfire series and has been published (mostly novellas) in various shared universes and anthologies (Honorverse, Man-Kzin, War-World, Going Interstellar) and magazines such as Analog.

Although no longer in the classroom, Gannon remains a Distinguished Professor of English (SBU), was a Fulbright Senior Specialist (2004-2009), is a member of the sf think-tank SIGMA (advises DoD, NASA, NRO, others), has been featured on The Discovery Channel and NPR, and won the 2006 ALA Choice Award for Rumors of War and Infernal Machines.

On Saturday, September 13, 2104, one day after my 57th birthday, I woke up, tallied my sales for the month on the XL spreadsheet I use for that purpose, and cheered as I saw that I had passed the one hundred thousand sales mark since I had been keeping track. I had been keeping this spreadsheet since August of 2012, which discounts the forty to sixty books I had sold from January through September 2012 across multiple outlets. And in August of 2012 I had only sold twenty-two books. The Deep Dark Well was my big seller that month with eight books. Things changed in September when I gave away 4,035 copies of The Deep Dark Well in a KDP Select promotion, and I later sold over 200 of TDDW that month on the way to selling 237 books. October was even better, with 507 sales, 307 of them TDDW, but also 112 copies of Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1. In November Exodus 1 took off, with 872 sales, then ,1,721 in December, along with 1,297 copies of Exodus 2. January 2013 was the real eye opener, the one that really let me think I could do this for a living, as I sold 8,560 ebooks, including 3,088 of Exodus 1, 2,758 of Exodus 2, and 750 of TDDW. Heady days, and I made the decision to quit the State of Florida and go full time in the Fall of that year. 5,677 sales in February changed those plans, and I never looked back as I left Department of Children and Families in March of 2013. Since then, my worst month has been 1,917 in July of 2014. My best, after that eye opening January, was 7,002 in May of 2014. Book 7 of the Exodus series came out August 20th, and has already sold over 4,300 copies, while September is turning out to be another great month.

What it comes to is 100,000 total sales in just a little more than twenty-four and a half months (August 2012 can be thrown out of that calculation, since I was over 100K by more than I had sold in that entire month). I was hoping when I got into this self-publishing thing that I would be successful. Success defined as enough money, along with my day job, to get by and possibly get ahead. By that definition I have been successful beyond my wildest dreams. I work for myself. I travel where I want to go when I want to. I’m buying a house, by damn. Not a big house, a nice little three bedroom two bath that I can fix the way I want. Enough for me, without being a big job keeping up. And I’ve met some really great people, at Dragon Con, Liberty Con, and the Superstars Writing Seminars. Big time authors, and people in the early part of their careers. My kind of people. And the many fans I have met, a few in person, most over the net. Again, my kind of people, even if we don’t agree on everything, we have a passion for one thing, sci-fi and fantasy.

On the same day I sold my hundred thousandth book among ebooks, paperbacks and audiobooks, I signed a contract with Kevin J Anderson to appear in the third volume of his Five by Five military science fiction series, coming soon. Kevin, Michael Stackpole, Sarah Hoyt, and Dani and Eytan Kollin round out the authors of the five stories, and I couldn’t be more proud or excited to be in their company. Looking forward to the coming year, and some more books to put out there, more people to meet. And hopefully come some steps closer to become a hybrid author, publishing in both the traditional and self-pub realms. I am working on a fantasy submission for Baen books right now, along with book four of the Refuge series. If Baen doesn’t like the fantasy I eventually will publish it myself, while working on a sci-fi idea for them.

I’m not on the New York Times Bestseller list yet, I’m not on any Hugo or Nebula lists, not well known outside my small circle of fans and friends. But I’m doing what I love, every day. I’m my own boss, and the future is looking really good.

Tomorrow will be a blog interview with Cornelius Walborski, the Hunter from the Exodus: Empires of War series. And the day after I will be blogging about my very soon to be released book (probably that day) How I Sold 100,000 Books On Amazon. More than I’m use to doing with the blog in such a short time, but such is life right now.

Of course there are a lot of things to do at Dragon Con, but with my age and energy level, the panels are my favorite. I get to sit down and take a load off, as well as get to see and hear some of my favorite authors. Some might be a panel featuring a single great author, like Literary Guest of Honor Harry Turtledove, seen above with my good friend, Van Allen Plexico, who always seems to get the sweet gigs (last year it was Larry Niven). I have always loved Harry Turtledove, from the first book of his I read, Guns of the South, and was fascinated by the entire alternate history concept. I really loved the Balance series, about aliens invading the Earth at the height of World War Two. Then his series about the South winning the Civil War, reaching up to WW1 and through to WW2. And his series about World War Two fought in a land of magic. And his…. Well, it goes on and on. I was afraid that his Q and A session would be packed, as Niven’s had been the year before, and there was a long line reaching around the Hyatt. There was not much of a line for Turtledove. I got to the end of the line and was talking to someone who said that he didn’t think the young people got into Harry. Just at that moment a young lady, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen, maybe younger, walked up and asked if it was the line to Turtledove. So he does get some younger fans after all. There were only about fifty to seventy-five fans in the room that could have seated ten times more. But Turtledove was gracious and humorous, the people there seemed to be knowledgeable and attentive, and a good time was had by all. I was very impressed by Harry, about how he had gotten out of school with a PhD in Byzantine History, and had great difficulty in getting a permanent position. About how he came across some of his ideas by accident or chance. How a combination of talent, imagination and luck led to his great career, the same factors as most successful authors. And he dropped hints on what is to come. Harry Turtledove is not going to sit on his laurels. Just like Niven the year before, he has plans to keep on working into the future.

Speaking of Niven, one of the best panels I saw dealt with one of his favorite subjects, Big Things in Science Fiction. Science Fiction writers Robert J Sawyer (Hugo and Nebula) and Chuck Gannon (Nebula nominee). both authors I am proud to call friends, were on this panel, along with a real NASA mover in Sam Ortega. The subject was some of the biggest objects in the world of Scifi, including Niven’s Ringworld. Huge space habitats, massive ships. moons that were really vessels (that’s no moon.) Expert opinions on experts in the field. People who love the same literature that I do, and love to talk about it. I got a couple of good pictures of Sawyer and Ortega, but missed Gannon. I talked with Chuck and Robert a bit after the panel, and saw Robert later in the Amerimart, getting a book and having it signed, my new hobby. Unfortunately I didn’t get to Chuck’s signing, but I will see him again next year at LibertyCon, and maybe even share a panel with him (I can always hope). And I look forward to Dragon Con now to meet with these gentlemen, and others like them, on a yearly basis.

This was my second Dragon Con, with 2013 being my first. I plan on returning, even when I have to use one of those self propelled carts to get around, though I hope I can spiff it up a bit. Maybe make it look like Captain Christopher Pike’s travel chair or something. Unfortunately, the one thing I forgot was my camera. Fortunately, I had my communication’s device which has its own camera, though with limited battery life I could only take so many. Essentially though, I go to Dragon Con for the authors. I really didn’t know that until last year, when, planning on seeing mostly celebrities, I instead ended up seeing people like Larry Niven and Kevin J Anderson. Now the authors are my main focus. This year they had Harry Turtledove, one of my favorites, and I did get to see him. I wanted to hear David Weber, who also attended, but missed him. No problem. I have two more chances to see him in the near future, and I’ll definitely get a chance to say a few words to him at Liberty Con next year. I, of course, was not a guest of the Con. I haven’t been around long enough to establish any kind of credentials. I tried to volunteer to moderate, but that also fell through. Again, next year at Liberty I get to break in to sitting on some panels. In some near future posts I will talk about the many authors I saw on different panels. Some I was able to chat with at certain times, like Hugh Howie, Chuck Gannon and Robert Sawyer. Others, like Jim Butcher, were just too mobbed to make the attempt, thought Butcher did say Hi in passing, and I wasn’t paying attention enough to realize who it was. Oh well. On the whole the attending authors were all very nice people. I thought there were some exceptions, as there always are, but their fans still seemed to love them. I saw some friends I met at the Writer’s Workshop last year, and at Kevin’s Superstars Seminar this February, including Kevin and Rebecca Moesta. I’m sure as I continue to attend I will meet more people, and see the growing number of people I have met again.

But, as seen in the pictures above, there are other reasons to attend a Con like this one. On one panel, Bill Fawcett, who definitely knows a lot about the Con, said that up to 65,000 people attended. Not as big as Comic Con, or even Mega Con in Orlando, it’s still one of the biggest and best of the fan Cons. And fans of everything and anything having to do with the fantastic. Books, TV, Movies, Comics, you name it. There are fans for it there. Sometimes the sheer numbers became a hassle to navigate through, and at times I wish I had some kinetic weapons to drop, or some particle beams to sweep, or even a demon sword like Stormbringer to swing, just to get people out of the way. Everything was mobbed. Even the food court. But the costumes were fantastic, to describe them perfectly. From bought off the shelf Starfleet uniforms (and some Royal Manticorean ones as well) to elaborate setups like the winged demon woman and her monstrous consort. It really is something to see three people, including the wearer, maneuvering a twelve foot long Black Dragon through the lobby of the Hyatt. All of the Dark Elves in attendance seemed to take it in stride, but then, they are creatures of evil themselves. There was no problem with taking pictures of them. These people spent some time and effort on their costumes, and they want to be seen and show off. Some of the best costumes involved group efforts like the Spartans in the parade (and this year’s parade was even better than last year’s), or the viking themed group. I saw other Spartan groups during the weekend, as well as groups of Dwarves and Elves, squads of Storm Troopers, demons, angels, and warriors of all kinds, from Colonial Warriors to Stargate Teams.

I was exhausted at the end of each day, roaming through this Disneyland kind of landscape. Normally I sleep poorly in hotels. This time I was out as soon as the lights went off, only pulled out of darkness by the alarm going off in the morning. Transportation was a bit of a problem. I was over by Turner Field, and though the hotel had advertised easy access to Marta, a mile walk was not my idea of easy access. There were shuttle buses in the morning, way too full, and taxis at night. I got ripped off by at least one taxi driver who didn’t turn his meter on till we reached the end of the trip, showing $18.50 when everyone else had charged about $10. I was too tired to get in an argument and gave him his money. The last driver was in luck. He was honest and asked for ten, and got a twenty for his trouble.

I would recommend Dragon to anyone who has not experienced a big Con. Or whatever is closest too you for those not in travel distance to Atlanta. It can run up some money. Hotels on a weekend like this are expensive, and if I were a younger person, I would consider sleeping with nine or eleven of my best friends in a room. But to this old nerd and fanboy, these are the best of times. Next up, I will talk about some of the great panels I attended, and some of the fantastic authors I met. And about how some of my plans for smoozing (yeah, I wanted to get my name out there) didn’t really amount to much.